Charles Stross is the author of The Laundry Files, a 12-book series of humorous science fiction spy thrillers.
The primary character in the series is Bob Howard, a former I.T. consultant who is now a field agent for the British government agency called ‘The Laundry’. This agency deals with occult dangers.
The books are inspired by Lovecraft’s ideas of the future. They are set in a world where computers and math are as effective as spellbooks and pentagrams for summoning creatures from other realms. They both have the special ability to manipulate ancient powers and open portals to other worlds.
The Laundry tries to keep the ways for accessing such forces hidden from the public eye. These occult battles take place mostly behind closed doors.
The stories are inspired by H. P. Lovecraft’s and others’ Cthulhu mythos realm. But they are not set in Lovecraft’s universe.
The biggest wizards in Stross’s world are the researchers who investigate phenomena in detail. The books include a secret history of intellectuals who found occult uses for their work.
Laundry Files Books in order
Laundry Files
- The Atrocity Archives (2004)
- The Jennifer Morgue (2006)
- Down on the Farm (2010)
- Equoid (2010)
- Overtime (2010)
- The Fuller Memorandum (2010)
- The Apocalypse Codex (2012)
- The Rhesus Chart (2014)
- The Annihilation Score (2015)
- The Nightmare Stacks (2016)
- The Delirium Brief (2017)
- The Labyrinth Index (2018)
- Escape from Yokai Land (2022)
Laundry Files Collection
Three Tales from the Laundry Files (2014)
The New Management
Similar authors
- John Scalzi’s The Kaiju Preservation Society series follows Jamie Gray. He is stuck as a driver for food delivery apps when COVID-19 sweeps through New York City.
- Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch features Peter Grant. He is an ordinary constable turned magician’s apprentice. He solves crimes across London with a blend of urban fantasy, mystery thriller, and fantasy caper.
See also: Jana Deleon Books in Order.
Most recommended books
- The Delirium Brief (Laundry Files, #8) (4.26 Goodreads score)
- The Nightmare Stacks (Laundry Files, #7) (4.23 Goodreads score)
- The Rhesus Chart (Laundry Files, #5) (4.18 Goodreads score)
- The Fuller Memorandum (Laundry Files #3) (4.18 Goodreads score)
- The Apocalypse Codex (Laundry Files, #4) (4.17 Goodreads score)
Awards
Both The Concrete Jungle and Equoid won the Hugo Award for Best Novella, while Overtime was a nominee for best novelette. The whole series was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Series in 2019.
Latest releases
The latest release in the world of Laundry Files is called Quantum of Nightmares. It is Book 2 of the New Management series, published in January 2022.
Book summaries
The Atrocity Archives (2004)
Bob Howard is a low-level techie working for a super-secret government agency. While his colleagues are out saving the world, Bob’s under a desk restoring lost data. His world was dull and safe – but then he went and got Noticed.Now, Bob is up to his neck in spycraft, parallel universes, dimension-hopping terrorists, monstrous elder gods and the end of the world. Only one thing is certain: it will take more than a full system reboot to sort this mess out .
The Jennifer Morgue (2006)
Bob Howard, geekish demonology hacker extraordinaire for “The Laundry,” must stop ruthless billionaire Ellis Billington from unleashing an eldritch horror, codenamed “Jennifer Morgue,” from the ocean’s depths for the purpose of ruling the world.
Down on the Farm (2010)
Laundry veteran Bob Howard must investigate strange doings at another obscure, moth-eaten government agency—evidently a rest home for Laundry agents whose minds have snapped…
Equoid (2010)
The “Laundry” is Britain’s super-secret agency devoted to protecting the realm from the supernatural horrors that menace it. Now Bob Howard, Laundry agent, must travel to the quiet English countryside to deal with an outbreak of one of the worst horrors imaginable. For, as it turns out, unicorns are real. They’re also ravenous killers from beyond spacetime…
Overtime (2010)
Now, in “Overtime,” the Laundry is on a skeleton staff for Christmas—leaving one bureaucrat to be all that stands between the world and annihilation by the Thing That Comes Down Chimneys
The Fuller Memorandum (2010)
Bob Howard is taking a much needed break from the field to catch up on his filing in The Laundry’s archives when a top secret dossier known as The Fuller Memorandum vanishes-along with his boss, who the agency’s executives believe stole the file.Determined to discover exactly what the memorandum contained, Bob runs afoul of Russian agents, ancient demons, and the apostles of a hideous faith, who have plans to raise a very unpleasant undead entity known as the Eater of Souls
The Apocalypse Codex (2012)
For outstanding heroism in the field (despite himself), computational demonologist Bob Howard is on the fast track for promotion to management within the Laundry, the supersecret British government agency tasked with defending the realm from occult threats. Assigned to External Assets, Bob discovers the company (unofficially) employs freelance agents to deal with sensitive situations that may embarrass Queen and Country. So when Ray Schiller—an American televangelist with the uncanny ability to miraculously heal the ill—becomes uncomfortably close to the Prime Minister, External Assets dispatches the brilliant, beautiful, and entirely unpredictable Persephone Hazard to infiltrate the Golden Promise Ministries and discover why the preacher is so interested in British politics. And it’s Bob’s job to make sure Persephone doesn’t cause an international incident. But it’s a supernatural incident that Bob needs to worry about—a global threat even the Laundry may be unable to clean up…
The Rhesus Chart (2014)
As a newly appointed junior manager within the Laundry—the clandestine organization responsible for protecting Britain against supernatural threats—Bob Howard is expected to show some initiative to help the agency battle the forces of darkness. But shining a light on what’s best left in the shadows is the last thing Bob wants to do—especially when those shadows hide an occult parasite spreading a deadly virus.Traders employed by a merchant bank in London are showing signs of infection—an array of unusual symptoms such as super-strength and -speed, an uncanny talent for mind control, an extreme allergic reaction to sunlight, and an unquenchable thirst for blood. While his department is tangled up in bureaucratic red tape (and Buffy reruns) debating how to stop the rash of vampirism, Bob digs deeper into the bank’s history—only to uncover a blood-curdling conspiracy between men and monsters…
The Annihilation Score (2015)
Dominique O’Brien—her friends call her Mo—lives a curious double life with her husband, Bob Howard. To the average civilian, they’re boring middle-aged civil servants. But within the labyrinthian secret circles of Her Majesty’s government, they’re operatives working for the nation’s occult security service known as the Laundry, charged with defending Britain against dark supernatural forces threatening humanity.Mo’s latest assignment is assisting the police in containing an unusual outbreak: ordinary citizens suddenly imbued with extraordinary abilities of the super-powered kind. Unfortunately these people prefer playing super-pranks instead of super-heroics. The Mayor of London being levitated by a dumpy man in Trafalgar Square would normally be a source of shared amusement for Mo and Bob, but they’re currently separated because something’s come between them—something evil. An antique violin, an Erich Zann original, made of human white bone, was designed to produce music capable of slaughtering demons. Mo is the custodian of this unholy instrument. It invades her dreams and yearns for the blood of her colleagues—and her husband. And despite Mo’s proficiency as a world class violinist, it cannot be controlled…
The Nightmare Stacks (2016)
After stumbling upon the algorithm that turned him and his fellow merchant bankers into vampires, Alex Schwartz was drafted by the Laundry, Britain’s secret counter-occult agency that’s humanity’s first line of defense against the forces of darkness. Dependent on his new employers for his continued existence—as Alex has no stomach for predatory blood-sucking—he has little choice but to accept his new role as an operative-in-training. For his first assignment, Alex is dispatched to Leeds to help assess the costs of renovating a 1950s Cold War bunker for use as the Laundry’s new headquarters. Unfortunately, Leeds is Alex’s hometown, and the thought of breaking the news to his parents that he’s left banking for the Civil Service, while hiding his undead condition, is causing him more anxiety than learning how to live as a vampire secret agent preparing to confront multiple apocalypses. Alex’s only saving grace is Cassie Brewer, a drama student appearing in the local goth festival who is inexplicably attracted to him despite his awkward personality and massive amounts of sunblock. But Cassie has secrets of her own—secrets that make Alex’s nightlife behaviors seem positively normal…
The Delirium Brief (2017)
Bob Howard’s career in the Laundry, the secret British government agency dedicated to protecting the world from unspeakable horrors from beyond spacetime, has entailed high combat, brilliant hacking, ancient magic, and combat with indescribably repellent creatures of pure evil. It has also involved a wearying amount of paperwork and office politics, and his expense reports are still a mess.Now, following the invasion of Yorkshire by the Host of Air and Darkness, the Laundry’s existence has become public, and Bob is being trotted out on TV to answer pointed questions about elven asylum seekers. What neither Bob nor his managers have foreseen is that their organization has earned the attention of a horror far more terrifying than any demon: a British government looking for public services to privatize.Inch by inch, Bob Howard and his managers are forced to consider the truly unthinkable: a coup against the British government itself.
The Labyrinth Index (2018)
Since she was promoted to the head of the Lords Select Committee on Sanguinary Affairs, every workday for Mhari Murphy has been a nightmare. It doesn’t help that her boss, the new Prime Minister of Britain, is a manipulative and deceptive pain in the butt. But what else can she expect when working under the thumb of none other than the elder god N’yar Lat-Hotep a.k.a the Creeping Chaos?Mhari’s most recent assignment takes her and a ragtag team of former Laundry agents across the pond into the depths of North America. The United States president has gone missing. Not that Americans are alarmed. For some mysterious reason, most of the country has forgotten the executive branch even exists. Perhaps it has to do with the Nazgûl currently occupying the government and attempting to summon Cthulhu.It’s now up to Mhari and her team to race against the Nazgûl’s vampire-manned dragnet to find and, for his own protection, kidnap the president.Who knew an egomaniacal, malevolent deity would have a soft spot for international relations?
Escape from Yokai Land (2022)
Escape from Yokai Land explains what he was doing there.Bob’s been assigned to work with the Miyamoto Group, checking the wards that lock down Japan’s warded sites—a task previously handled by his predecessor Dr. Angleton, the Eater of Souls. This mostly involves policing yokai: traditional magical beings, increasingly grown more annoying and energetic.But then Bob’s simple trip turns into a deadly confrontation with the ultimate yokai. It’s massively powerful. It’s pink. And it says “Hello.”
Three Tales from the Laundry Files (2014)
Enjoy two short stories and a novella from the Laundry Files. Originally published on Tor.com, these stories by Charles Stross continue the adventures of the Laundry, a secret division of the British government dedicated to tracking down and containing breaches of reality by occult and otherworldly threats.
Dead Lies Dreaming (2020)
As Wendy hunts down Imp—the cyberpunk head of a band calling themselves “The Lost Boys”— she is dragged into the schemes of louche billionaire Rupert de Montfort Bigge. Rupert has discovered that the sole surviving copy of the long-lost concordance to the one true Necronomicon is up for underground auction in London. He hires Imp’s sister, Eve, to procure it by any means necessary, and in the process, he encounters Wendy Deere.In a tale of corruption, assassination, thievery, and magic, Wendy Deere must navigate rotting mansions that lead to distant pasts, evil tycoons, corrupt government officials, lethal curses, and her own moral qualms in order to make it out of this chase alive.
Quantum of Nightmares (2022)
It’s a brave new Britain under the New Management. The avuncular Prime Minister is an ancient eldritch god of unimaginable power. Crime is plummeting as almost every offense is punishable by death. And everywhere you look, there are people with strange powers, some of which they can control, and some, not so much.Hyperorganized and formidable, Eve Starkey defeated her boss, the louche magical adept and billionaire Rupert de Montfort Bigge, in a supernatural duel to the death. Now she’s in charge of the Bigge Corporation—just in time to discover the lethal trap Rupert set for her long ago.Wendy Deere’s transhuman abilities have gotten her through many a scrape. Now she’s gainfully employed investigating unauthorized supernatural shenanigans. She swore to herself she wouldn’t again get entangled with Eve Starkey’s bohemian brother Imp and his crew of transhuman misfits. Yeah, right.Mary Macandless has powers of her own. Right now she’s pretending to be a nanny in order to kidnap the children of a pair of famous, Government-authorized superheroes. These children have powers of their own, and Mary Macandless is in way over her head.Amanda Sullivan is the HR manager of a minor grocery chain, much oppressed by her glossy blonde boss—who is cooking up an appalling, extralegal scheme literally involving human flesh.All of these stories will come together, with world-bending results…